Lakeland Motor Museum gears up for TVR celebration

IF YOU like your motors noisy and nostalgic then a Bank Holiday motoring celebration in Cumbria could be just your thing.

The TVR Car Club is marking the anniversary of two of Blackpool's best known sports cars - the TVR M Series of the 1970s, and the wedge-shaped 350i of the Eighties - by holding a special event at the Lakeland Motor Museum on May 6, where they're encouraging petrolheads to check out dozens of TVRs from across the north of England.

Event organiser and TVR Car Club member John Bailie said: "This is a unique opportunity for visitors to the museum to see these magnificent motor cars in a fantastic setting on the edge of the Lake District and to meet some interesting personalities who made the Blackpool company such a success during the 1970s, one of the most significant periods in the firm's history".

A line-up of dozens of these models, from the Cumbria, Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cheshire TVR Car Club regions will be on display all day in a dedicated area alongside the museum, which is home to the oldest surviving TVR.

In addition to M-series and 350i, star cars on display will include a full race TVR Tuscan in Gulf Racing colours, a TVR Tasmin with 750bhp NASCAR spec engine and TVR Sagaris, one of the most recent models produced by the Blackpool factory before it closed a few years ago.

The event will take place at the museum's base in Newby Bridge, near Windermere, on Sunday, May 6. For more information, visit the TVR Car Club website.

The TVR Griffith is back...

...but let's get straight to the point. If you want to buy a new one, you'd better have the thick end of £100,000 to set aside.

That's how much TVR Motors, a company that's recently risen like a phoenix from the ashes, would like to charge you for their reincarnation of Blackpool's most famous automotive export. One of the few cars that - like an E-Type, an F40 or an XJ220 - I would do just anything to get behind the wheel of.

The new logo used by TVR Motors on its cars

The Griffith, I honestly thought, had gone for good in 2001, when TVR replaced it with the equally loud but arguably uglier Tamora, but now both are back thanks to TVR Motors' plans, as are the Tuscan, T350, Sagaris and - for those of who like TVRs a tad older - the Cerbera and Chimaera. But rather than being built by Blackpool by a team of plucky craftsmen in a collection of pre-fabs, they're now made to order in Austria, which is why they now cost Aston Vantage money.

A statement on the company's website - which also gives enthusiasts the chance to rebuild their existing TVRs with 6.2 litre V8 engines - says:

"TVR now offers customers to build the models Sagaris, Tuscan convertible, Tuscan MK II, Cerbera, Chimaera and Griffith to individual specifications.

"All cars feature a new 6.2 litre, 426 bhp, 420 lb/ft V8 engine, and a reinforced 5 gear gearbox at a fixed price."

I can see the logic; if you're a) as passionately in love with TVR's classics as I am and b) rich then you'll happily pay £100,000 for what will be the world's best Griffith, because it'll be faster, newer and better-built than any Griffith that's ever gone before. People will happily pay upwards of £100,000 for a reconditioned Jensen Interceptor, and even though it's barely 20 years old the Griffith arguably has a dedicated enough following to justify a costly reinvention.

It's just a shame the pricetage ruins a bit of the old TVR magic. When it was launched in the early Nineties a Griffith - and it didn't matter whether it was the 4.3 or the later 500 - could embarrass a Ferrari 348 for less than half the price. Price was a big part of the TVR's appeal, because a brand new Cerbera was "the fastest, noisiest thing this side of a Lamborghini Diablo" - as Clarkson put it - despite costing less than £50,000.

Jeremy Clarkson's test of the TVR Cerbera for BBC Top Gear in 1995

Being asked to stump up £100,000 for a car that cost a third of that in its heyday might make sense but it still doesn't seem very 'TVR' in its philosophy.

Would you?

TVR: Blackpool's tower of sports car strength

THE FORD Capri enthusiast gave the strangely styled creation a slightly quizzical look. "Why would you want to buy one those fibreglass bubbles?"

I was over in Blackpool last weekend covering a Ford Capri gathering for Life On Cars, and one owner I was chatting to seemed genuinely bemused when the one car that town can call its own suddenly thundered onto the seafront. The fibreglass bubble in question was a TVR and I struggled not to defend its honour. I challenge anyone with even the vaguest interest in cars not to love Blackpool's very own sports car.

The thing with TVR is that their products aren't really created in any conventional car industry sense, so I doubt any visiting bigwigs from BMW or Lexus would have been very impressed with the ramshackle sheds it called its factory. Certainly, I can think of no other car which was partly styled by the MD's dog, which after getting a bit peckish, bit a chunk out of the clay styling model for the Chimaera. This being TVR, the MD was pleased by his pooch's efforts and included the bite marks on the production model. That's part of the reason why TVRs are packed full of meaty goodness.

TVR was a slightly bonkers company, which as a treat for my 13th birthday I actually got given the chance to witness first hand on a tour of the Blackpool factory. The Griffith, Chimaera and Cerbera, I discovered, were crafted by hand out of plastic by chaps who'd then equip them with enormously powerful V8 engines, but no traction control, ABS, airbags or door handles. Nor did they think a car should be painted just one colour - as the iridescent and slightly mad TVR Tuscan proved - or have interiors that followed even the vaguest of logic. The styling was best described as surreal. This, I imagined, was how all cars in the future would look.

Unfortunately I'm now a fully grown boy and the cars of the future don't look like TVRs at all. In fact, TVR went bust four years ago just as something called the Credit Crunch happened and the queue of people who wanted to spend £50,000 on a plastic sports car with Star Wars styling dried up. In these recession-ravaged times, new car buyers simply don't want something that's been styled by someone's dog.

After the Capri show had finished, I went back to the old Bristol Avenue factory - the same site I'd toured as a spotty 13-year-old - and was heartbroken by what I saw. Behind the empty building was a yard full of moulds used to make the old TVR models and a Cerbera coupe the company hadn't quite finished, and they were being left outside to rot away, untouched and unappreciated. It was of the saddest sights I've ever seen.

So to conclude TVRs are badly built out of plastic, styled with canine assistance and completely irrelevant to any car that's gone before or since. Which is why, after all these years, I still want one.